Chapter 12

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THE words brought Jane to her feet.

"No, no, no!" she said breathlessly. And, in a panic: "I don't know what you mean---the Clever One. You mean the forger?"

"I mean the forger," said Marjorie relentlessly. "The man all London is talking about; the bank-note gentleman."

She waited for an answer, but none came. Then she nodded slowly.

"I see---who told you that Peter was the forger?"

Only now was Jane beginning to understand what she had done. In a moment of pitiable weakness she had made a confidante of the last person in the world she would have trusted, and told or inferred that catastrophic secret which might bring her life tumbling about her in hopeless ruin.

"How absurd!" She made an heroic effort to bring the talk back to normal, though she realised she had ventured too far from the safe and beaten path to be successful. "I'm only telling you what Basil said about Peter. You knew it, of course?"

Marjorie shook her head.

"My dear husband tells me nothing," she said, with a hard little smile. "I guess a lot, and sometimes I guess wrong. But I never supposed that Peter was mad---that's it, is it?"

She slipped an arm round the girl's shaking shoulders.

"Here am I getting all motherly and affectionate," she said, but Jane felt the sneer that could not be hidden and drew clear of the encircling arm. "And the horrible thing is that I've never liked you and you've always loathed me. I suppose you know I'm desperately in love with your Peter?"

She said this so calmly that Jane thought she was joking, but a glance at the woman's face told her that behind the flippancy was the truth.

"That's a disgraceful confession for a decent married woman to make---but I was, and I am. Up to a point."

Jane looked at her aghast for a moment, and in some odd way a little spark of virtuous indignation kindled and died in her heart.

"If you were very much in love with him," said Marjorie, "you would want to murder me! Happily you're not."

Her eyes had not left Jane's all the time she was speaking.

"You like him and you're sorry for him, which means you're on the jumping-off place for love." She sighed heavily. "Peter, of course, wouldn't have told you of the many infamous hints I have given to him. I don't suppose he recognised them, poor dear!"

She walked back to the pier glass, carefully applied a lipstick to her red mouth before she spoke again.

"Good Lord---what an amazing thing!" She nodded in the friendliest way to her reflection. "And Basil told you---and of course Basil wouldn't lie. He never tells a lie when he is trying to hurt. Have you spoken to my good man?"

"No," said Jane.

For the first time in her life she understood this hard woman. Marjorie had always been a terrifying quantity: a woman with a bitter tongue, all too ready to gibe at things which had been rather precious to Jane.

"So Basil told you, eh?" The voice of Marjorie Cheyne Wells was almost silky. "I'm rather sorry for Basil. He's foul, but amusing."

"Why are you sorry for him?" asked Jane.

Marjorie did not turn her head, but continued the operation of her lipstick.

"Because," she said slowly and without the slightest trace of emotion, "I don't think Basil has very long to live!"

Jane stared at her in wonderment.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that if he told Peter and Peter knows----"

Jane had the feeling that this wife of Cheyne Wells was going to make some tremendous pronouncement, but she checked herself and laughed softly.

If she loved Peter she loved herself better. Marjorie Wells was making a new survey of life, tabulating assets which hitherto had been invisible. Knowledge had brought her from the status of suspecting observer to a participant in a game so great that only now was she beginning to rate it at its true value.

Her laughter stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and she bent her head, listening.

"That is dear Donald in the hall, and he'll be wondering what ghastly secrets I've been telling you about his patients. Let us go down; I want to have a good look at Peter---and don't forget that I'm madly in love with him."

The lightness of her tone called for a smile, but Jane had an uncanny knack of getting beneath the superficialities of voice and manner, and she knew that Marjorie Wells was investing an old truth with a new significance.

"You have no rival," she said as flippantly.

Marjorie gave her an odd glance which it was impossible to interpret.

Her husband had an instinct that was almost clairvoyant. She had noticed it on previous occasions. She was startled to have a manifestation now of his queerly occult power. One glance he gave at Jane's face, and then, to the visible embarrassment of Peter, he said abruptly:

"Hale has been here talking a lot of nonsense about Peter."

Marjorie did not attempt to simulate surprise. She had tried that before and had failed miserably to deceive him.

"Jane has just told me," she said.

She was more successful in her assumption of indifference.

"I knew that sooner or later that drunken brute would make trouble."

She heard Peter's murmured protest; unless she was mistaken that would be sufficient to turn Donald's conversation into another channel. She herself led the talk to surer ground. The evening passed conversationally; a most commonplace end to a bewildering day, thought Jane, as she closed the door of her bedroom and locked it.

That night she had come to a decision. She would write to her father and tell the astute John Leith everything. Fortunately there was a good supply of stationery in her bedroom---fortunately because she made half a dozen attempts before she finally plunged into the recital of her troubles. She had always taken them to her father, but it required an especial effort to tell him of her discovery. Now she spared him nothing. He would be hurt, alarmed, horrified; and the only logical outcome to her letter would be his arrival to take her away. Was not that also the only sane step she could take? She was married to a forger---a criminal with perhaps a life sentence over his head. But that seemed almost unimportant, as she wrote, compared with the greater and more awful menace which had already thrown a shadow over her life.

She wrote:

. . . I don't know what you can do, daddy, except come and take me away. I think Peter will understand. He is aware that I know. And really he is most considerate, most thoughtful---a dear. I feel I'm being a terrible coward in running away, but to put in a week of this would get on my nerves, and it is better that I should go now before he returns to London. We have made a ghastly mistake. . . .

She wrote until one o'clock, and then---she destroyed the letter, burning it in the grate. Peter and Cheyne Wells were in bed; she had heard Peter's door close and his harsh good night in the passage. Her own mind was in confusion; she was mentally and physically weary, and was asleep a few seconds after she had reached out and switched off the light.

Tap, tap, tap!

The noise was gentle but insistent. She was instantly awake, sitting up in bed, her heart thumping painfully.

"Who is it?" she asked in a low voice, when she had located the sound.

"Marjorie---let me in."

The whispered words were urgent. Jane slipped out of bed, unlocked the door and admitted the woman.

"Shut the door---lock it."

The hand on Jane's bare arm was cold and trembling.

"What is the matter?"

Marjorie must have guessed she was feeling for the switch of the little table-lamp, for she stopped her.

"No, no, don't put on the light. I've got one of my nervous fits---can't sleep. This is a horrible house!"

She had evidently brought her dressing-gown on her arm, for Jane heard the swish of silk as her guest pulled it on.

"Where is Peter sleeping?"

"In the next room but one---do you want him?"

There was no answer for a while, and then:

"This room is very dark. Are the curtains over the window very heavy---would a light be seen from the outside?"

"No," said Jane, wondering.

"Very well, put on the lamp."

In the dim, warm light Marjorie Wells's face showed gaunt and pallid.

"Where is Donald sleeping? I didn't even trouble to inquire."

"Donald is at the back of the house," Jane told her, and the shivering woman sighed her relief.

"If he hears me talking he will come in, and I don't want to see Donald to-night."

She went across to the window and, examining the curtains, seemed satisfied.

"What time is it?" She peered down at the little gold clock on the bedside table---she was, Jane discovered, a little short-sighted. "Half-past two. I went to bed at eleven."

Jane threw kindling wood on the half-dead fire---the night was chilly. She wondered how long Marjorie intended staying, yet felt more pleasure than annoyance to have her companionship.

Donald's wife had drawn an arm-chair to the fire and sat crouching over it, warming her trembling hands. After a while she broke her brooding silence.

"You must have thought I was mad when I asked about the Clever One---you didn't tell Peter, did you?"

"I've hardly spoken to Peter," said Jane, keeping her voice steady. "Who is this forger? Have you some idea?"

She had to set her teeth to ask the words, but Marjorie raised one shoulder in denial.

"I don't know," she said indifferently. "One talks about this kind of people, though one is never brought into even the remotest contact with them. Donald had one of his forged notes. He must be very rich." She shot a glance at the girl, so swift that Jane hardly saw the movement of her eyes. "They'll catch him one of these days and then he'll go to prison for life, and a jolly good thing for everybody."

Jane shuddered at the venom in the woman's tone. It was almost as though she had a personal grudge against the forger. Then, in her abrupt way, Marjorie went off at a tangent.

"Was Basil very foul? What a loathsome beast he is! But you rather liked him, didn't you?"

Jane nodded.

"He is always amusing," she said.

"Amusing!" sneered Marjorie Wells. "At somebody else's expense."

"Have you known him long?"

She was not really interested, but the occasion called for a conversational effort.

"Years ago, when we were at Nunhead."

She saw that the name meant nothing to Jane.

"You didn't know Donald had a sixpenny practice in South London, did you? But he did. And if you think he won his way to Harley Street by sheer brilliance, I am going to undeceive you! Donald was once as near to ruin as any man can get without tumbling over the edge---and I sometimes wish he'd tumbled," she added coolly.